Since the crackdown on protests in Iran between January 8 and 10, there has been controversy over the true death toll from the bloody events. According to figures provided by the Iranian government, 3,117 people were killed, including civilians and security forces. However, estimates from outside the country put the number between 5,000 and a staggering 36,500.
This wide range not only reflects the fact that it is extremely difficult to verify these reports, but also that there was a concerted effort to use the death toll to fabricate global consent for the Iranian attack and to downplay the official death toll of the Gaza massacre through deceptive rhetoric.
Since the protests erupted, there has been a race to estimate and report casualties. I call this the “Olympics of Death Count.”
Iranian-centered human rights groups led by opposition activists are examining all types of evidence and testimonies to confirm the death toll. At the time of writing, the US-based organization HRANA (Human Rights Defenders News Agency) says over 6,000 deaths and over 17,000 more cases are under investigation.
But there are legitimate questions about the speed of the activist-led verification process.
Every time a death is reported, multiple accounts must be investigated to identify and remove potential duplicates. You must then match dates, locations, and specific circumstances to the timeline of events.
Additionally, visual evidence must be located and authenticated based on open source data or supported by the testimony of multiple witnesses. Therefore, from an investigative perspective, the reliability and quality of the rapidly increasing number of activist-led cases requires caution.
Mai Sato, the UN special rapporteur on Iran, cited conservative estimates of the death toll at around 5,000. At the same time, she said unconfirmed numbers of up to 20,000 people were being reported by medical personnel.
The aforementioned obstacles and verification difficulties over the past few weeks have been exacerbated by the severely restricted internet access in Iran. Nevertheless, mainstream media outlets have begun publishing much higher numbers, based solely on vague anonymous sources claiming privileged access within the Iranian government or health sector.
For example, on January 25, the UK-based television station Iran International published a report claiming that 36,500 people had been killed, citing “extensive reports” purportedly obtained from Iranian security services, which have not been made public or transparent.
On the same day, the US news magazine Time published an article entitled, “Death toll in Iran protests could exceed 30,000, local health officials say.” “As many as 30,000 people may have been killed on the streets of Iran on January 8 and 9 alone,” the newspaper claimed, based on testimony from two senior officials at the country’s health ministry, whose identities were not disclosed for security reasons. Notably, the magazine acknowledged in its text that it did not have the means to independently verify that number.
Two days later, the British newspaper The Guardian followed a similar trend, publishing an article titled “Missing bodies, mass graves and ‘30,000 dead’: What is the truth about Iran’s death toll?” This article introduced a figure of 30,000 based on an estimate by an anonymous doctor interviewed by the newspaper. The outlet acknowledged that he and his Iranian colleagues were actually hesitant to give specific numbers.
Other media outlets, from the Sunday Times to Piers Morgan’s Uncensored, have cited a paper circulated by Germany-based ophthalmologist Amir Parasta that claims the death toll is between 16,500 and 33,000. However, the latest version of the paper available dates back to January 23 and uses a controversial extrapolation method to arrive at the numbers. Surprisingly, the Parasta has made no secret of his relationship with Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s exiled Shah.
The exiled crown prince and his team, whose extensive social media manipulation and disinformation efforts were exposed by a recent investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, have played a key role in inciting and escalating the recent protests toward confrontation. Therefore, the death toll propagated by Parasta cannot be taken as neutral and is at best a partisan estimate.
The media outlets in question admit that they do not have the ability to verify these estimates, but nevertheless put these extreme numbers in titles and subheadings. It wasn’t long before other news organizations referred to these major publications as primary sources and reported on these inflated numbers. Activists and Western politicians are also using them to advance their own agendas, further accelerating the spiral of disinformation campaigns on social media. –In other words, the “Olympics of the Dead” was born.
All of this served two purposes.
First, it has supported efforts to fabricate consent for foreign military intervention and malign political action. While protests were still ongoing, US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened military action against Iran in the event of a deadly crackdown. As of this writing, there is a significant buildup of American forces around Iran, effectively increasing the clouds of war.
Second, speculation about the Iranian death toll has helped Western pro-Israel politicians and commentators downplay the cost of Israel’s war in Gaza. In this way, it became a utilitarian tool for relativizing the Palestinian genocide.
Facing mounting pressure over the death toll, Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian ordered authorities to “publish the names and personal information of those who died in recent tragic events.” His communications director even promised that he had established procedures to investigate and verify conflicting claims.
It remains to be seen how effective and transparent the promised steps will be. It is undeniable that thousands of people have been killed in Iran, mostly by Iranian security forces, during several days of brutal mob and counter-insurgency operations.
The exact death toll is likely never known due to structural opacity and limited access to independent experts in Iran. However, the more transparency is established regarding the scale of the killings, the more likely it is that the perpetrators will be held accountable.
The painstaking process of verifying recent deaths is critical not only for accountability, but also for exposing media manipulation that is once again preparing the ground for unilateral US-led aggression in the Middle East. With this in mind, the “Death Count Olympics” remains a disgraceful disgrace to the wretched peoples of the planet, from Palestine to Iran.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
